My Ex is a Billionaire

Beatrice I rush over to the office as quickly as I can. I have Mr. Finch’s iced coffee in my hand. I ran up the stairs to the second floor, hoping that no one was behind me, because I’m pretty sure my skirt is a little bit too short today, but I didn’t even have time to think when I was getting ready earlier. I don’t even bother putting my purse down at the front desk, I just go straight to Mr. Finch’s office. I reach for the door knob ready to hand him his coffee, when it opens up and smacks me. Making me spill the coffee all over myself.  “Oh so you’re late and you dropped my coffee. Great.” Before I start to panic I hear him speak. I can’t even figure out what to do first. The only thing I do is look up to Ethan Finch’s dark green eyes which are looking up and down my body that’s covered in iced coffee. His chiseled jaw is clenched, and I know he’s angry.  In the five months that I’ve been a receptionist here I’ve never talked to Ethan Finch. All of our conversations have been him yelling, complaining, or questioning me, while I simply respond with, ‘yes sir’ ‘no sir’ and ‘sorry sir.’ I’ve learned that he’s an intimidating man, to most, and doesn’t like small talk. Either way even if he did I don’t think I could carry a conversation with him without getting lost in his eyes. It was a miracle I could stand straight when he’s around. Every female in the office had at least tried once to get Mr. Finch to notice them as more than an employee, except I haven’t had the confidence to ever try that. I barely even had the confidence to stammer, “Oh..oh no! I’m so sorry Mr. Finch! I have to go down to the dry cleaners for you today, I’ll call them to rush, and I’ll bring you a new shirt. I’ll fix it, I’m so sorry.” My heart started to pump faster with fear, and nerves. I’m so scared about what he will say. He rolls his eyes and sighs. “It’s fine Beatrice. I have extra shirts in my car. I’m already late for my meeting. Just make sure you do get my dry cleaning on time.” He walks past me without even looking me in the eyes, and I stay there defeated and sad.  “You know what they say. Hate to see them go, but I love to watch them leave.” I jump at the sound, and turn around to see Lauren. Lauren has been the best thing to happen to me since I started working here. She’s become like a best friend, and is always looking out for me.  She smiles at me and says, “You’re late again. Did you have another dream about him?” I groan as she brings it up. The look in her eyes tells me she knows the answer is yes. I have these dreams at random times about my ex from high school. It’s ridiculous, I know. How could I not be over my high school ex after all these years, but you can’t always control dreams. At this point though I’d call mine nightmares. They make me oversleep and come late to work whenever they happen. Last night we were at a park and he brought sushi that he made, which didn’t make sense because he never knew how to cook when we were together. It was a perfect date though, but when I wake up it hurts a little knowing I’ll never get dates like that.  Lauren pats my shoulder, “Let’s go get you cleaned up.” I nod, and we walk to the bathroom. Lauren pulls out a hair brush from her purse, and as I wipe my shirt with paper towels, I watch as she combs my long, naturally curly, light brown hair. I start to stare at my face, and see that my brown eyes have such bad bags under them, you’d think I under slept, instead of overslept. “It’s a shame you can’t have dreams about Mr. Finch. Mmm what I’d do to dream of him every night.” Lauren says as she finishes up and puts the comb away. I sigh, “Yeah well I’d rather just not dream at all.” I turn to face her, and she has her arms crossed, and her eyebrow raised at me, obviously annoyed, as she says, “We that’s no fun at all. Dreams are good for a person. Don’t let these dreams ruin everything else for you.” I give a weak smile, “I know. I know. Thanks Lauren.” Before we could leave, the bathroom door swings open, and Rachel walks in. She took one look at me before laughing, “Well at least I know where the coffee smell is coming from. Did Mr Finch throw his coffee at you once he saw how disgusting you look today?” She laughs again, and I see Lauren start to move toward her like she was going to slap her, so I pull her back from her sleeve. “Let her go. Just help me finish cleaning up.” I was used to Rachel being rude to me. Apparently she hated me because one time Mr. Finch told me I looked nice, and since Rachel is practically obsessed with him, she hated me for it. To be honest I don’t even remember him telling me that. Maybe I was too busy daydreaming. Dreams tend to ruin things for me. I couldn’t help but start to think of the dream that I had last  night. The one about the picnic date. God, I can’t believe I’m still so hung up on him. He’s the one who cheated on me, and then left town with the girl the next day. I should be dreaming about getting back at him. I don’t even know what happened to him anyway.  Myles “Don’t worry Ethan, I'll help you out. I’m pulling up to your firm now. Just have all the files ready.” I hang up the phone and see Amanda staring at me. “Yes?” She rolls her blue eyes as she says, “I still don’t understand why we’re helping out such a small town lawyer. It’s above our pay grade.” “Because he’s an old college friend,” I explain. Ethan Finch was in the same graduation class as me when I graduated from law school. He was a good friend of mine, who helped me through the tough times. Hell, he’s the one who should be working for a billionaire law firm company. If it wasn’t owned by my father, I’d probably be just where Ethan was. Except Ethan had the drive to open his own law firm without anyone's help. He was better than me in that sense. So when Ethan called me saying that he got a huge case that he didn’t want to screw up, I didn’t hesitate to tell him I’d help out.  As the driver pulls up to his law firm, I see that it’s small. Nothing like the three story building that I call my law firm. Somehow though this small building is a breath of fresh air. I can see Amanda’s face in a scowl. She can be so pretentious, but I ignore her. I walk through the front doors with her right behind me. The smell of coffee instantly hits my nose, as I walk further in, the smell grows. I’m at the receptionist desk now. A girl with light brown hair is sitting there, her head down as she takes notes. She’s on the phone. I start tapping my foot waiting for her. I thought Ethan would’ve at least let her know to be prepared.  The girl hangs up the phone, then looks up at me. Her brown eyes are soft and her head tilts as she locks eyes with me. The only reason I ever hesitated on coming back to this entire state was for one reason. One reason that I didn’t think I would have to deal with. After all, the last time I saw her, she lived four hours away from here. Yet, there she was sitting down staring at me. Her eyes widened as she recognized me the way I am recognizing her. I can tell she’s breathing faster. Still, I don’t say anything. I just stare. She’s still so damn beautiful. My heart aches just looking at her.  “Beatrice, why didn’t you tell me he’s here.” Ethan’s voice comes booming through the hall as he comes down towards Amanda and I. Bea quickly looks away from me, and looks at Ethan. “I’m sorry Mr. Finch, they just arrived.” Ethan ignores Bea, and just goes over to me. “Myles, thank you so much for coming, you’re Amanda right.” He leans over to Amanda and shakes her hand. “Yup, that’s me. Nice to meet you.” “How was the flight?” Ethan is still talking, and Amanda is answering, but I find my eyes still looking at Bea. She won’t look at me, and that kills me. I understand though, but I want nothing more, than to see those brown eyes, with the twinkle behind them. The sound of her name snaps me away from whatever trance I’m in. “Beatrice,” Ethan begins, “make a new pot of coffee and bring it to my office. Ethan, Amanda if you want to follow me.” Bea nods and heads off to a room to my right, it looks like a small kitchen. As Ethan starts to take off I quickly say, I’m just going to get something from the car, please go on. I’ll meet you there in a second.” They nod, and as soon as they turn to leave, I follow Bea into the kitchen. She hears my footsteps, and when she looks up she drops the spoon she had in her hand. I bend down to pick it up for her, when she practically shouts.  “No please. I got it.” Her voice is so hostile. She won’t look me in the eye. I don’t have to guess that she’s still bitter about everything.  “Bea please. Just look at me.” I say. She snaps again. “Don’t call me that. Only friends call me that, and you Myles are no friend. You cheated on me, and skipped town. You left me wondering if something happened to you. If you died.” Yup, still bitter. She was so angry. I didn’t know someone that small could hold such anger. Still I couldn’t help but just gaze at her. She notices this and gets angrier, “Stop looking at me Myles. Look, I know you’re gonna be here to help Mr. Finch for a while, but don’t think that means I’m going to talk to you for anything more than work. Please no small talk, you at least owe me that.” She was right. I did at least owe her that. But the idea of not talking to her while we were here just felt wrong as well. “I know, but I just haven’t seen you in years. I have to know, how are you? How’s your mom?” Her eyes narrow at me as she says, “Dead my mom’s dead. See what I told you? Small talk is not fun.”  She quickly turns around and starts working on the coffee again. I feel a pain in my chest. Her mom was dead? I can’t believe it. Her mom was such a nice person, she always welcomed me with open arms. When we were in high school Bea was such an emotional person, I can’t imagine how much pain she was in. “I’m so sorry Bea. I didn’t know.” I say. She scoffs at my apology, “Please don’t. I didn’t expect you to know, it’s not like you cared about me after you left. It was a long time ago. I'm fine now.” A long time ago? How long ago was it? I can tell I’m not in the position to ask her questions. But there were so many questions that I had. I know she has questions too. Now that we’re older, I would love to tell her the truth. I would love to tell her what really happened between me and the girl she caught me with. I would tell her why I left. The real reason. I would tell her about all the nights I cried missing her. I would tell her that she was my first true love that I would do anything for.  I had never intended to see her again, or ever wanted to tell her what happened. What were the odds that she would be here? Of all the ex girlfriends I could’ve run into, I ran into my very first love. I always wondered what she was up to though, deep down inside. Maybe this was fate’s way of telling me I had to tell her the truth. So if the only way to speak to her was with work, I was going to do everything I could to make sure that she and I ended up working a lot together. This was going to be an interesting couple of weeks.